


The Thing About Kids (is They Change You)

by alphera



Series: Children Teach Us Many Things (We Would Rather Not Learn Otherwise) [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: M/M, Shameless babyfic for the sake of babyfic, Written Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-07
Updated: 2012-08-07
Packaged: 2017-11-11 15:39:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/480110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphera/pseuds/alphera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kidfic. Tony is clingy. Lucy gives everyone nicknames (because she is a baby and all babies give family baby-nicknames, right?) Also, how Lucy came to be a Stark. (Not in that order)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Thing About Kids (is They Change You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aslipperysloth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aslipperysloth/gifts), [rougewinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rougewinter/gifts).



i. Tony’s early onset of empty nest syndrome  
  
Tony first suspects Lucy’s _special_ when Spidey joins the team. He’s there, up on the kitchen ceiling, when Lucy comes in and then BAM! He’s flat on the floor. He refuses to even remotely think about having to send Lucy to boarding school (So _what_ if Xavier’s Institute is safe and happy? That’s his baby! He’s not sending her away!), Tony keeps this little tidbit to himself and strives to erase it from his mind. He labels Spiderman’s fall a freak accident and says “Anyway, Peter, maybe it’s better to stay on the ground with Lucy around. She might get _ideas_.”  
  
And then Tony discovers Johnny Storm can’t set himself on fire when Lucy’s within a 10 feet radius, and neither can Cyclops fire those freaky eye-plasma things. Telepathy seems to work okay though, and other such within-skin-type powers. Tony refuses to acknowledge what Lucy can do, even with all the overwhelming evidence. Thankfully, Thor, who spends at least 50% of the time with Lucy, is an exemption to the rule (being an alien-slash-god has its perks, it seems) and can still do whatever tricks he wants to do, or the gig would’ve been up a long time ago.  
  
Of course, even Tony can’t stop people from finding out when some wacko decides to try frying Lucy and the energy beam he streams out of his fucking mouth fizzles out midair instead. Fine, people know now, but at least Tony can worry approximately 5% less about her when some crazy supervillain decides to show up when they’re strolling along Central Park.  
  
Thankfully, all the Avengers – don’t let any of them fool you into thinking otherwise, all really means _all of them_ – are glad it’s something low key and completely subconscious and safe, or else they’d have to ship her off to Xavier’s for her personal development or some such, and they’d all probably go crazy. (Either from missing her, or Tony going clingy-weepy-manic-crazy which would drive Cap crazy which would pretty much drive everyone else crazy.)  
  
Xavier still asks Tony to send Lucy over once in a while to socialize with the other mutant kids or some-such, which, fine. Tony can do that. As long as it’s not more than 8 hours a day, he’s good.  
  
…God, he’s going to die when Lucy reaches that age where kids start asking about sleepovers.  
  
*****  
  
ii. The unnamed mother (aka how Lucy came to be a Stark)  
  
Not all mutants want to _be_ special. She, for example, just wanted to be a normal, everyday kind of girl. Thankfully, her mutation fit in perfectly well with her preferences. (Or is it the other way around? These chicken-and-egg things are so troublesome). It wasn’t anything strong or flashy. Basically, it was just a little easier for her to coax dead gadgets (or any electro-mechanical thing, really) back into working order, and she could also get things to work a little better than they were wont to do. In any case, if these little tidbits of her life helped her in her quest to become a truly wonderful mechanical engineer, then she figured she was simply born with an aptitude for it. She never understood why Mutations (with a capital M) had to be such a big deal anyway. After all, she was tone deaf and had zero colour matching capabilities, but _she_ didn’t think naturally talented singers or artists had an unfair advantage over her.  
  
Thing is, she’d always wanted to be more or less normal. Maybe not normal in the no-genetic-advantage department, but normal in that people would keep treating her the same as everyone else. And she’d had that wish, mostly. No one ever really noticed; but now... she was pretty much as normal as normal could possibly be. Not an ounce of power left in her to hide. For the first time since her toddler years, she didn’t have to hide any aspect of herself for people to treat her normally. Unfortunately, as good as things had gotten, certain urgent matters came up, and she had to think fast if she wanted to do fix things the way she wanted them fixed.  
  
Thing was, she had a baby. And she was pretty sure her baby was special. Her ability to coax gadgets to do things they didn’t want to do anymore had gotten more and more difficult as her pregnancy progressed, and later on eventually disappeared altogether. It hadn’t been back since. Of course, this could've just been a normal thing for mutant mothers, but she didn’t think so.  
  
As it turned out, having genetic special skills switched off for nearly nine months tended to do a number to a person. Or, at least, to her. Apparently, everything else just wanted to switch off too, and even now, she can practically feel the clock ticking on her bodily functions.  
  
The thing was, she wanted her little girl to have what she had – the type of life where people won’t hate you or love you more simply because you were, by chance, born with something they weren’t. But even she didn’t know what her daughter would be able to do in a year or five. She had no family to speak of, and she couldn’t possibly leave her baby in foster care; she’d heard stories, and few of them were pretty. The father was out of the question. He was one of those mutants with _strong feelings_ on the mutant issue and she didn’t want that. She didn’t want her child brought up indoctrinated with mutant politics and propaganda.  
  
Tony Stark and the Avengers didn’t register as an option for her, not really, until the day she passed by a conference room at Stark Industries and saw her big boss Stark being scolded like a two-year old. Him and a big guy that looked suspiciously like Captain America.  
  
When she realized that the big guy was, in fact, _the_ Captain America – that was when the idea hit her like a freight train. If even Tony Stark and Captain America were treated like everyday men – instead of the minor gods they actually were – by the people they lived and interacted with, then that was the best chance her baby had, right?  
  
So she watched and waited for an opportunity to leave her baby in their hands. Luckily, it didn’t even take two weeks. Tony had given all the workers on his office’s floor the day off (possibly to make room for particularly athletic and/or noisy sexytiemz – the power couple seemed to be really fond of doing that). Ms. Potts, who was the only one in the universe with the authority (and balls) to overturn the order, was out with a cold, and the duo themselves had been called out to take care of some emergency or other.  
  
With no time to lose, she crossed the street, entered the building, smiled at the familiar faces, took a thankfully empty elevator up to Tony Stark’s office, and left her baby on the big old desk with a big kiss and even bigger hopes for the future.  
  
She was pretty sure they’d keep her. Tony had been her boss since she started working, and yeah, he had the douchey-playboy act down pat, but she was confident in saying that it really was just that – an act. Despite how the world tended to view him, he was also the type of guy who extended paid leaves to employees with long term illnesses (or a difficult pregnancy) and gave get-well bonuses at the end of it. He gave obscene amounts of money to charity, took a pro-active stance against abuse in any form in the office, and made special toys for orphaned children. He stopped the weapons division – and went all hard and flinty-eyed at anyone who even vaguely suggested its re-establishment – and even regularly ignored personal safety to put on a super-powered suit to Save the World. It wasn’t easy to leave her baby there, but she knew that in the end, this could turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to her tiny baby.  
  
 _Good luck, baby. Hope you have as good a life as I’ve had – or better, even._  
  
*****  
  
iii. The inevitable baby-originated family nicknames  
  
Lucy’s first word is Daddy. Her next word, for some reason, is Tony; which Tony eventually realises is what she calls Tony-in-the-suit-with-faceplate-on. Apparently, he’s only ‘Daddy’ when she can see his eyes or something. (And yes, that includes the shades. Steve happily notes that Lucy is single-handedly getting rid of Tony’s propensity to wear shades indoors.) Her third word? Papy. And then Nicky and then Clinty (Clinty actually comes first, but no one ever corrects Nick Fury when he says otherwise) and then... just lots of –y’s. Because obviously, if she was –y, and Tony was –y twice over, then everyone else in the family must be an –y too. Apart from the brain-breaking effort it takes to get used to equating “Nicky” to Fury (What is up with that? Who even calls Fury by his given name?) and “Tashy” to Natasha, none of their new nicknames are particularly mortifying.  
  
Until Clint opens his mouth.  
  
“You know, I call my grandpa ‘papy’.” He says one day as the Avengers collectively watch Lucy chew on her broccoli mush.  
  
Tony nods absently. “So did I.”  
  
Clint blinks, and looks at Steve thoughtfully. “Hey Cap, weren’t you born in the 20’s?”  
  
“...Yes?” Steve answers, confused.  
  
There is a long silence, and maybe it could’ve ended there, but then Clint says “ _Papy._ ” deliberately and heavy with meaning, and Steve turns beet red.  
  
Really, how can Clint (or any of the other Avengers, to be honest) resist the temptation to see that again? So, whenever Cap least expects it, Clint makes it a point to say things like ‘That technically makes you a cradle robber, right?’ and ‘What’s the male version of cougar again? Manther? Hmm... Capmanther has a nice ring to it.’ and ‘Hey, on the bright side, if you were born in the 20’s and Tony in the 60’s you only have around three more decades to go until it stops being socially awkward.’  
  
Meanwhile, everyone else (except Tony, who just calls Steve _Steve_ ) decides to call Cap _”Papy”_ as suggestively as possible. Which is not so bad, really. People are amused, Steve is just embarrassed (no harm done), and Tony gets to comfort and/or distract Steve every time this happens. Win and definitely win. Good results, that.  
  
It takes three years for Steve to convince Lucy to call him anything else (Popsy), and neither Steve’s reaction nor the charm of seeing him get embarrassed dwindles one whit the entire time.  
  
Tony valiantly ignores the initial urge to make jokes about licking any Popsy-cles and hurries to completely erase the idea from his brain. (There’s a vast difference in making someone turn red because of embarrassment and making someone turn red because of... other things, after all. And ew, that was their daughter calling Steve that, alright? Some things are even beyond Tony Stark’s shamelessness.)  
  
In any case, it’s not like people have completely stopped calling him Papy just to laugh at him. In fact, in a few years, even Lucy joins in sometimes.  
  
(Thor is pleased to note that Lucy spells Loki as “Loky” and draws a green black and gold beanpole-like-thing in all her family drawings. The rest of the Avengers, meanwhile, decide to ignore this little factoid [along with how random unlabelled-but-safe presents tend to appear for Lucy when there are Loki sightings in New York] for the sake of their sanities.)

**Author's Note:**

> *Formula for a cradle robber, wherein  
> a is the age of older partner, and  
> b the age of younger:  
> IF b = a/2 + 7, THEN a is not a cradle robber  
> (taken from my sister, who I assume took it from the internet)
> 
> **For those not mentioned in fic, here are the names Lucy calls them:  
> Coulson is Philly (again, no one knows how this happened. Tony's actually forgotten Coulson even had an honest to god given name)  
> Bruce is Brucy  
> Hulk is Hully  
> Pepper is Peppy  
> Rhodey is still Rhodey  
> Thor is Thory or Thorny (Thory happens more often, Thorny is just when she sort of stumbles in her words, they think)
> 
> Many, many thanks to the wonderful [rougewinter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rougewinter) who poked and prodded me until I got off my butt and wrote it. Also for beta-ing. And for putting up with me through my unhealthy love for the word "snatch" ~~(Snatch. Snatch. SNATCHSNATCHSNATCH)~~. A huge thank you to [aslipperysloth]() as well, who unknowingly motivated me into writing Stony. :P After beta-ing such a great fic as [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/364682?view_full_work=true), who _wouldn't_ be motivated, I ask you?
> 
> Archived from [livejournal](http://alphera.livejournal.com).


End file.
